The lyrically poised figure, with a face spiritually enlivened, this Manjushri is one of the finest bronze sculptures so far found in the 7th-8th century Bengal. Another interesting bronze image, once gilt with gold-leaf, comes from Deulbari in the Comilla district, and represents the Brahmanical goddess Sarvani. The image, now lost, was dedicated by Prabhadevi, queen of Devakhadga, the ruler of south-east Bengal in the third quarter of the 7th century AD. Though the image is crude, especially in comparison with the Manjushri, the presence of these two images is important evidence to prove the introduction of the technique of metal casting in Bengal by the end of the 7th century AD.
Besides stone and metal, stucco was also practiced as a medium of plastic art in the early 7th century Bengal. Excavations at the site of raktamrttika-vihara, a monastery near karnasuvarna in the Murshidabad district, have yielded a number of much dilapidated stucco figures, including human heads. One of them, now in the West Bengal State Archaeological Museum, shows a softly smiling face, reminding some of the similar stucco faces of contemporary nalanda.
For about one hundred years, from c 650 AD to 750 AD, a period of turmoil in Bengal, there was no patronage for such a cost-oriented medium of art as sculpture. As a result no worth mentioning sculpture, whether in stone or metal, assignable to the late 7th or early 8th centuries could be found in Bengal proper, though in Bihar images of gods and goddesses were carved in isolated centres.
When in the middle of the 8th century the foundation of the Pala kingdom was laid, the situation began to improve. The kings were ardent devotees of the religion of Tathagata, and its Mahayana version received liberal patronage from them. While Dharmapala founded several monasteries and temples in Bengal and Bihar, Devapala's munificence brought new glories to olden Buddhist centres like Nalanda. The Buddhist monasteries of the period were great repositories of Indian knowledge and wisdom, and universities for their academic dissemination. Some of the monasteries included techniques of image making in their courses of learning, and maintained atelier and furnace for the purpose.
The art developed over a period of four hundred years and more in eastern India under the Palas and the Senas. It is natural that the art could not remain the same all through, and the laws of evolution would play its role in finalising the general features of the school, which is known as the 'Pala-Sena School'. Besides the time factor, the local ideals and preferences of forms also made some impression on the development of the style. The school's basic characteristics include its immense productivity, both in the mediums of stone and metal, preponderance of gods and goddesses, belonging to Buddhist as well as Brahmanical pantheon, and increasing stylization of figures and decorative elements. The artist had to adhere to the injunctions laid down in the iconographical texts on image making. But even working under such restrictions the artist did not fail altogether in leaving the stamp of his personal genius on his creations; and this he achieved by the dexterity of execution and attainment of visually perfect forms. What is important to note is that, in spite of obvious similarity in many Pala-Sena Buddhas or Visnus, no two images of any of the deity are fully identical. Variation, even in a minute form, is always there in the images of the school.
From the evidence of sculpture, it is possible to discern that there was a revival of art ideals of the Guptas under the Palas in eastern India and under the Gurjara-Pratiharas in the Ganga-Jamuna valley in the early 9th century. A testimony of Taranath, the 17th-century Tibetan historian of Indian Buddhism, is very relevant in this context. In his work he records that two artists, Dhimana and his son Vitpala, highly proficient in the techniques of metal-casting, engraving and painting, lived during the time of Dharmapala and Devapala, and they followed the tradition of Naga art, which, as we know, flourished in the post-Kusana and pre-Gupta Mathura region. This was the region where the Gupta classical art first emerged out of the experiences of the Kusana days. In all likelihood, Dhimana and Vitpala took initiative in reviving the Gupta classical norms in eastern Indian art in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
Since Bihar was a part of the Pala kingdom from almost the beginning, it would be necessary to take into account the sculptures of the region, along with those of Bengal proper. Of the Pala sculptures the earliest dated example, assigned to the 26th regnal year of Dharmapala (c 775-810 AD), is from Gaya in Bihar. Two dated bronze Balaramas and a stone Tara of the days of Devapala also belong to the region. In fact, the hoard of bronze images, discovered at Nalanda from archaeological strata marked as of Devapala, provides the stylistic basis for the 9th century Pala sculpture. From this century onwards sculptures were carved and cast in abundance in various places of Bihar and Bengal, making it easier to examine the stylistic development of the school.
Stylistically speaking, the Pala-Sena art of the 9th to 12th century AD evolved in broad outlines almost parallel to the art of Ganga-Yamuna valley, though not without some of its distinctive features. The basic characteristic of the evolution through centuries in both regions is intentness for maintaining the rounded human forms as of the Gupta period. But feelings for floridness and multiplicity are among the features that made the sculptures of the period different from those of the Guptas. The floridness may be recognised in the execution of various motifs and designs on the stele, pedestal and ornaments on the person of the figure, while the multiplicity in the introduction of subsidiary figures on the sides and sometimes around the central one as parshvadevatas. Increase in the number of ratha projections on the pedestal, and stylisation in the treatment of lotuses providing asanas or seats for the figures are pointers to the sculptures of the later centuries. These are the general trends in style that may help distinguishing a 9th-10th century image from an example of the 11th-12th century.
In the chronological sequence of the Pala sculptures the first major examples are those stone reliefs on the basement of the Buddhist temple at Paharpur, which have already been mentioned above as belonging to the third group and datable with the foundation of the temple by Dharmapala sometime in the last quarter of the 8th century AD. This group of reliefs represents various subjects including the legend of Krsna. This Krsna is not however of the Brahmanical hierarchy, but Krsna who is popular in every Bengali household as a pet child of mother Yashoda, the eternal lover of the gopis, and a daring exploiter as the divine hero. This group of sculptures also depicts several scenes from the epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana. Though not as refined and rhythmically poised as the figures of the first group treated above as examples of the post-Gupta style, the large number of panels of the group show narrative scenes with several male and female forms in action. In these scenes the artist succeeded in expressing himself more freely, almost in a popular style found in the terracotta plaques discovered from the same site. These sculptures, though early products of the Pala school, are unique for their lively themes and popular expressions. But such examples are rare in the development of the school in the following centuries, when images meant for worship by the devotees of different religions and creeds dominated the entire scene with iconographical characteristics.
A great centre of the Pala art is Nalanda, where Buddhist images in stone and metal were profusely produced throughout the Pala period from 9th century onwards. The two major features of the images are their pedestal and the backing or aureole. Two types of pedestal are found in this early Pala phase: singhasana or lion-borne seat and triratha or base with single projection and receding moulds. The Nalanda images of Panchika and Hariti, both in bronze and with inscribed dates of Devapala, are found in seated posture on the singhasana, while the two Balarama figures of the same time, one from Nalanda and the other from Kurkihar or Kukkutarama-vihara, also in south Bihar, stand on triratha base. The Balaramas show over the transverse bar a seven-hooded snake as providing a canopy for the god, but in other images the place is occupied by an oval-shape halo with flame motifs on its border, which is typical of the style. The vertical bars on sides of the figure are adorned with gaja-singha or lion-on-elephant forms, and occasionally with swans. Such pedestals and aureoles are undoubted derivations from the Gupta tradition, both in their concepts and motifs, but here they are found to be more stylized. In the following centuries, more specifically in the 11th and 12th centuries, they became conventionalized and even cumbrous.
As for the figurers of the early Pala phase, they retained the plastic modelling and gliding contour lines of the Gupta style, as also the sensitivity of the flesh and, in cases, meditative yogic eyes and blissful smile. For example, the bronze image of the Buddhist god Panchika referred to above, bear all these characteristics in its excellently preserved form represented in a balanced ratio with the pedestal and the aureole. The image is now in the possession of National Museum, New Delhi. The Balarama from Kurkihar is also remarkable for his relaxed stance and sensitive plastic modelling.
In comparison, however, Bengal has so far yielded only a few sculptures of the time, and they mostly represent Visnu. Two standing bronze Visnus, one from Kumarpur, Rajshahi (H. 26 cm) now in the Varendra Research Museum (fig 9), and the other of unknown provenance in the possession of the Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka, show similar composition with oval halo surrounding the head and strictly frontal pose. More interesting seems, however, a Visnu on flying Garuda from Agradigun in Dinajpur. Carved in black basalt, and preserved in the Asutosh Museum, it shows the god in a relaxed pose with soft and sensitive modelling in a composition balanced by the stylized spread of the wings of the bird, which is in a human form. (09 of 16)
Besides stone and metal, stucco was also practiced as a medium of plastic art in the early 7th century Bengal. Excavations at the site of raktamrttika-vihara, a monastery near karnasuvarna in the Murshidabad district, have yielded a number of much dilapidated stucco figures, including human heads. One of them, now in the West Bengal State Archaeological Museum, shows a softly smiling face, reminding some of the similar stucco faces of contemporary nalanda.
For about one hundred years, from c 650 AD to 750 AD, a period of turmoil in Bengal, there was no patronage for such a cost-oriented medium of art as sculpture. As a result no worth mentioning sculpture, whether in stone or metal, assignable to the late 7th or early 8th centuries could be found in Bengal proper, though in Bihar images of gods and goddesses were carved in isolated centres.
When in the middle of the 8th century the foundation of the Pala kingdom was laid, the situation began to improve. The kings were ardent devotees of the religion of Tathagata, and its Mahayana version received liberal patronage from them. While Dharmapala founded several monasteries and temples in Bengal and Bihar, Devapala's munificence brought new glories to olden Buddhist centres like Nalanda. The Buddhist monasteries of the period were great repositories of Indian knowledge and wisdom, and universities for their academic dissemination. Some of the monasteries included techniques of image making in their courses of learning, and maintained atelier and furnace for the purpose.
The art developed over a period of four hundred years and more in eastern India under the Palas and the Senas. It is natural that the art could not remain the same all through, and the laws of evolution would play its role in finalising the general features of the school, which is known as the 'Pala-Sena School'. Besides the time factor, the local ideals and preferences of forms also made some impression on the development of the style. The school's basic characteristics include its immense productivity, both in the mediums of stone and metal, preponderance of gods and goddesses, belonging to Buddhist as well as Brahmanical pantheon, and increasing stylization of figures and decorative elements. The artist had to adhere to the injunctions laid down in the iconographical texts on image making. But even working under such restrictions the artist did not fail altogether in leaving the stamp of his personal genius on his creations; and this he achieved by the dexterity of execution and attainment of visually perfect forms. What is important to note is that, in spite of obvious similarity in many Pala-Sena Buddhas or Visnus, no two images of any of the deity are fully identical. Variation, even in a minute form, is always there in the images of the school.
From the evidence of sculpture, it is possible to discern that there was a revival of art ideals of the Guptas under the Palas in eastern India and under the Gurjara-Pratiharas in the Ganga-Jamuna valley in the early 9th century. A testimony of Taranath, the 17th-century Tibetan historian of Indian Buddhism, is very relevant in this context. In his work he records that two artists, Dhimana and his son Vitpala, highly proficient in the techniques of metal-casting, engraving and painting, lived during the time of Dharmapala and Devapala, and they followed the tradition of Naga art, which, as we know, flourished in the post-Kusana and pre-Gupta Mathura region. This was the region where the Gupta classical art first emerged out of the experiences of the Kusana days. In all likelihood, Dhimana and Vitpala took initiative in reviving the Gupta classical norms in eastern Indian art in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
Since Bihar was a part of the Pala kingdom from almost the beginning, it would be necessary to take into account the sculptures of the region, along with those of Bengal proper. Of the Pala sculptures the earliest dated example, assigned to the 26th regnal year of Dharmapala (c 775-810 AD), is from Gaya in Bihar. Two dated bronze Balaramas and a stone Tara of the days of Devapala also belong to the region. In fact, the hoard of bronze images, discovered at Nalanda from archaeological strata marked as of Devapala, provides the stylistic basis for the 9th century Pala sculpture. From this century onwards sculptures were carved and cast in abundance in various places of Bihar and Bengal, making it easier to examine the stylistic development of the school.
Stylistically speaking, the Pala-Sena art of the 9th to 12th century AD evolved in broad outlines almost parallel to the art of Ganga-Yamuna valley, though not without some of its distinctive features. The basic characteristic of the evolution through centuries in both regions is intentness for maintaining the rounded human forms as of the Gupta period. But feelings for floridness and multiplicity are among the features that made the sculptures of the period different from those of the Guptas. The floridness may be recognised in the execution of various motifs and designs on the stele, pedestal and ornaments on the person of the figure, while the multiplicity in the introduction of subsidiary figures on the sides and sometimes around the central one as parshvadevatas. Increase in the number of ratha projections on the pedestal, and stylisation in the treatment of lotuses providing asanas or seats for the figures are pointers to the sculptures of the later centuries. These are the general trends in style that may help distinguishing a 9th-10th century image from an example of the 11th-12th century.
In the chronological sequence of the Pala sculptures the first major examples are those stone reliefs on the basement of the Buddhist temple at Paharpur, which have already been mentioned above as belonging to the third group and datable with the foundation of the temple by Dharmapala sometime in the last quarter of the 8th century AD. This group of reliefs represents various subjects including the legend of Krsna. This Krsna is not however of the Brahmanical hierarchy, but Krsna who is popular in every Bengali household as a pet child of mother Yashoda, the eternal lover of the gopis, and a daring exploiter as the divine hero. This group of sculptures also depicts several scenes from the epics, Mahabharata and Ramayana. Though not as refined and rhythmically poised as the figures of the first group treated above as examples of the post-Gupta style, the large number of panels of the group show narrative scenes with several male and female forms in action. In these scenes the artist succeeded in expressing himself more freely, almost in a popular style found in the terracotta plaques discovered from the same site. These sculptures, though early products of the Pala school, are unique for their lively themes and popular expressions. But such examples are rare in the development of the school in the following centuries, when images meant for worship by the devotees of different religions and creeds dominated the entire scene with iconographical characteristics.
A great centre of the Pala art is Nalanda, where Buddhist images in stone and metal were profusely produced throughout the Pala period from 9th century onwards. The two major features of the images are their pedestal and the backing or aureole. Two types of pedestal are found in this early Pala phase: singhasana or lion-borne seat and triratha or base with single projection and receding moulds. The Nalanda images of Panchika and Hariti, both in bronze and with inscribed dates of Devapala, are found in seated posture on the singhasana, while the two Balarama figures of the same time, one from Nalanda and the other from Kurkihar or Kukkutarama-vihara, also in south Bihar, stand on triratha base. The Balaramas show over the transverse bar a seven-hooded snake as providing a canopy for the god, but in other images the place is occupied by an oval-shape halo with flame motifs on its border, which is typical of the style. The vertical bars on sides of the figure are adorned with gaja-singha or lion-on-elephant forms, and occasionally with swans. Such pedestals and aureoles are undoubted derivations from the Gupta tradition, both in their concepts and motifs, but here they are found to be more stylized. In the following centuries, more specifically in the 11th and 12th centuries, they became conventionalized and even cumbrous.
As for the figurers of the early Pala phase, they retained the plastic modelling and gliding contour lines of the Gupta style, as also the sensitivity of the flesh and, in cases, meditative yogic eyes and blissful smile. For example, the bronze image of the Buddhist god Panchika referred to above, bear all these characteristics in its excellently preserved form represented in a balanced ratio with the pedestal and the aureole. The image is now in the possession of National Museum, New Delhi. The Balarama from Kurkihar is also remarkable for his relaxed stance and sensitive plastic modelling.
In comparison, however, Bengal has so far yielded only a few sculptures of the time, and they mostly represent Visnu. Two standing bronze Visnus, one from Kumarpur, Rajshahi (H. 26 cm) now in the Varendra Research Museum (fig 9), and the other of unknown provenance in the possession of the Bangladesh National Museum, Dhaka, show similar composition with oval halo surrounding the head and strictly frontal pose. More interesting seems, however, a Visnu on flying Garuda from Agradigun in Dinajpur. Carved in black basalt, and preserved in the Asutosh Museum, it shows the god in a relaxed pose with soft and sensitive modelling in a composition balanced by the stylized spread of the wings of the bird, which is in a human form. (09 of 16)
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